U.S. mail, postal facilities, and government buildings have in the past been contaminated with weaponized anthrax spores, which resulted in several cases of bioterrorism-related inhalational anthrax infections. Because the U.S. Postal Service currently handles an estimated 239 billion items of mail per year, the risk is high that another disease outbreak will result from acts of bioterrorism. To protect the public health, mail and buildings actually or potentially contaminated with a bioweapon from such an attack must be thoroughly decontaminated.
One problem with the decontamination of bioterrorism sites is that anthrax and other bioweapon spores generally are “weaponized,” which changes the spores' native characteristics and makes them more resistant to decontamination. While conventional decontamination protocols, such as exposure to chlorine dioxide, ethylene oxide, formaldehyde, or steam may be sufficient to kill many sporulated bacteria, they often fail to completely inactivate weaponized spores.
Furthermore, even those conventional bioweapon decontamination protocols that are effective on non-porous surfaces typically fail to fully decontaminate porous surfaces, such as paper. For instance, U.S. Pat. No. 4,681,739 discloses a method for decontaminating a bacterial spore-contaminated surface that is substantially gas-impermeable. However, this method is ineffective at decontaminating porous surfaces, particularly porous surfaces that are contaminated with weaponized spores. Reliance on such a method may permit weaponized spores to remain viable and undetected, leading to possible infection and death.